You must have heard of many “-nauts” like astronaut, cosmonaut, taikonaut (and indian “vyomanaut”?!?). Those are different verbal versions of human in space, mostly in political accent. But I’m sure “Robonaut” going to be omnipresent in vocabulary of any country. So it is sort of first ‘Robonaut’, in official definition the first dexterous humanoid robot in space, which is successfully put to “wake up” in outer space, well, on board ISS (International Space Station).

It was brought to ISS by Space Shuttle Discovery in February. Fortunately, it was not a part of russian cargo shipment which went to ocean after unsuccessful launch couple of weeks ago. Robonaut was dormant for few months on ISS and finally it got a “wake-up” call. And moreover, it has officially started tweeting. Catch him/her at @AstroRobonaut.

It’s also answering questions from followers that provide information about how the robot operates and the tasks it will be performing while on board the space station.

From its tweets, people can learn that the robot is not manning the computer on his own (“The team that created me helps me tweet”); that it has no legs at the moment but that eventually will be getting some (“I will be getting some legs to help me move around in zero-g”); and that the robot has some autonomy (“I require ground control, but I can also respond to my environment within controlled specifications.”).

(Source: informationweek.com)

R2, Robonaut 2, is a part of NASA Robonaut program, a collaboration between NASA and GM. R2 is fully functional and it is going to perform some basic “robotic” task on ISS. R2 is also an experiment for the moment, but in future it will do more than that. Of course, it is going to be useful in future missions, perhaps deep space travel, where Robonauts can be deployed before sending astronauts (cosmonauts, taiko…).

Image source: flickr.com
News Source: informationweek.com